Bad or Worse

Writer’s note: This week’s post is being presented in all my blogs as I feel that the information is important enough to be told to all audiences.

All right class.

This week’s word is bad.

It is such a simple 3 letter word.

However its meaning is quite vast.

It could mean defective. It could mean evil. It could mean awful. It could mean any number of things.

Back in the 1980’s Michael Jackson sang about “being bad”.

Back then, Jessica Rabbit stated that “she wasn’t bad, she was drawn that way”.

Last weekend on Facebook, a friend of mine stated that they thought they were a “bad person” because they had no father figure in her life and she was going to spend Father’s Day with her daughter.

To me, this is certainly not the making of a “bad person”, but to some people they like to jump to conclusions with little or no evidence. I will get back to that in a bit.

But first, let me rewind time back to last Wednesday, June 11. That day everything seemed normal as I had just put my weekly blog posts online and was done for the day. I decided to do my normal checking in on my ex Tanya on Facebook as I normally do. Granted I had never friended her nor did really ever intend to, but I am still curious about her post-wedding life. For those who read my open letter to her a couple of weeks ago would realize that she still holds a special place with me despite being married to someone else. There seemed to be nothing new on her page or her husband’s, as I regularly checked his too after they got engaged.

So I closed down and called it a day.

Then came Thursday June 12 and well let’s just say something was very wrong.

My first thing that I normally do is check my Twitter account. I usually check to see if I have any new followers or lost any old ones. I had noticed that a couple of people that I had followed seemed to have disappeared.

So just for the heck of it, I checked Tanya's profile and noticed that she had 1 less followers. Granted, she has never tweeted anything so following her may seem counterproductive. When I checked her list of followers, I noticed that I (yes, me) was no longer a follower of hers.

I had wondered what happened.

So I decided to try and re-follow her.

Apparently that was NOT going to happen as she appeared to have blocked me on Twitter. I, then decided to check her husband’s account as well. Even though I never followed him, I was blocked there as well when I tried to follow him.

Ok, this is not good. Not good at all.

So then I decided to go to my Facebook account.

I did a search on her and her page did not come up. I tried typing in the URL that would lead directly to her page and got a “page not found” message. I then repeated the same thing with her husband and received the same result.

At this point, I decided to log into my alternative Facebook account where I am not under my name, and low and behold BOTH of their Facebook accounts were there in all their glory.

So now it was quite apparent.

I was blocked not only by her, but by her husband as well, somebody who has never met me, seen me, or know anything about me at all.

So here I was blocked on both Facebook and Twitter by both of them with no real justification.

At this point, I was shocked and wrote a quick post on Facebook stating that feeling.

Before I get into the response to that, let me just say that I really don’t know what made Tanya to block me. The only thing I would think is that somehow she might have gotten wind of my open letter and somehow might have been offended or angered by it. While I don’t believe that I said anything offensive, she decided that it was best to slam the door on me on as much social media as possible. To add her husband to this blocking made me think that she must be angrier at me for reasons unknown to me. In some ways, I really wish I could turn back the clock and apologize to her for everything that went wrong even though it wasn’t totally my fault.

Now for the response on Facebook I received.

First I am going to call this female responder Janie as to protect her identity.

Janie and I had gone to high school together and really were never that close, however like many others from high school she friended me on Facebook about a year or so ago.

Janie usually spoke her mind and while sometimes mean-spirited, she was rarely ever offensive. That was until this most current posting, which did bother me somewhat.

While her remarks are only 5 lines long, they speak volumes on feelings that really should not exist at all. In one recent message to me, she stated that she “was not my enemy”. I will leave it up to you, dear readers to decide the fate of that statement.

So here we go:

Her first sentence is “I’m sorry to know how depressed you are”. I see nothing wrong with that statement at all.

Sentence 2 is “No one deserves to feel that way”. So far nothing wrong with that statement either.

Sentence 3 is “I’m sure you are a bad person.” Just as the train was rolling smoothly down the tracks we now have this huge derailment. Honestly, where does this sentence follow the first 2 especially when she said just a few weeks earlier that she was “not my enemy”? This sounds like a HUGE contradiction to me. What does she mean by a bad person? Maybe the next sentence might give us a clue.

Sentence 4 is “After just having read some of your last blogs, I think your view of the world is rather narrow.” Ok, you have read only SOME of my blogs and you think I am a bad person because of it? Of course, Janie doesn’t say which blogs she finds me narrow-minded on, therefore her theory falls flat with zero proof.

Sentence 5 is “Have you had a thorough medical check up?” Now unless Janie has a medical degree, this statement is way out of place and certainly uncalled for. However, let me set the record straight, mentally I am absolutely fine, physically walking and standing is an issue and has been since before I lost my job over 5 years ago. Beyond that nothing about my health should even be discussed.

Sentence 6 is “Are you (sic) parents aware of how you’re feeling?” Is she serious? I am well over 21 and this just goes beyond absurd. Again this statement holds no value as Janie doesn’t hold a medical degree so it is not her place to make type of diagnosis.

Finally, sentence 7 is “I believe there are ways to hear (sic) yourself so that you can feel better.” What does this even mean? It makes no sense whatsoever.

Overall, I was quite offended by Janie’s posting. However, I decided not to either unfriend or block her as I feel that would really be the wrong thing to do. I feel that I have a lot to say that would benefit her as would fellow readers. Unfortunately, none of the sentences that Janie stated followed any of the others. No proof of any problems were given, which presented a non-existent case on her behalf.

It is ironic that some of the same things that Janie brought up were some of the same conversations that I used to have with Tanya during her employment with me. However, in Tanya's case, she talked more of her own problems and how we had similar problems and how we could solve our problems together.

Yet, in the end, Tanya ended up blocking me from her existence and turned her back on me. Hopefully, Janie doesn’t end up the same way. I think she is smarter than that.

Walmart–Not Safe Anywhere

It has been a very bad week for Walmart.

First we had the tragic accident in New Jersey by a Walmart tractor trailer that critically injured comic Tracy Morgan and killed another passenger. It was reported that the truck driver hadn’t slept in about 24 hours, much longer than allowed by law. It has been reported that Walmart will stand behind the driver in any charges brought against him.

However, and this is a big however, the driver has gone on a Twitter rampage making outlandish statements that this was all blown out of proportion by the media and their cameras. One of the worst was that his profile said “Move or Get Hit #Walmart”. It seems to me that anybody who would ever write something like this should never be employed as a truck driver especially with a company like Walmart. My best advice for Walmart is for them to fire this guy once and for all and distance themselves from this criminal.

Meanwhile, a couple of days later on the west coast of Las Vegas, a couple shot 2 cops at a restaurant then went to the Walmart nearby where they shot a customer and then went to the back of the store and committed suicide after making a statement that this was the “start of the revolution”. Now while the authorities are trying to figure out, what this was all about, it brings up another concern about safety and Walmart, from a totally different perspective.

First let us take a look at the truck accident. Certainly, this could have happened with any company’s truck and any employee who fakes their logs to drive longer than legally allowed. However, being an employee of Walmart, the driver is the company. He must act in responsible manner at all times. Apparently, he either chose not to or just enjoys breaking the law anyway. Given his Twitter feed, I believe the latter is more of the answer.

What really bothers me about all this is that more and more trucks seem to be going much faster than the posted speed limits on the highways. Not only that but many of the companies no longer have the notice on the back of their trucks of “How’s My Driving? Call.”. Maybe they have had too many calls reporting too many bad drivers. I believe that there should be more of a crackdown on drivers and have more weigh stations open that would check driver’s logs and get these potentially dangerous drivers off the road.

Now as far as the store incident in Las Vegas is concerned, it is difficult to tell if this really could have been avoided. However, stores like Walmart really should have better security with people who are armed just in case such incidents like this occur. Of course, this would create a possible unsafe environment for everybody with the thought that someone is walking around a store who is armed even though they are protecting the store.

Unfortunately, I know of no store that has armed security people in them to protect the customers and other employees. Given the number of incidents in recent years, certainly the need for better security is a necessity. In future posts, I will discuss safety in much deeper detail and how bad it really is.

Overall, it is not known yet what kind of damage these 2 incidents will have on the Walmart name. Given the type of customer that Walmart attracts, I would not be surprised if they never notice the difference at all. However, to customers like me, it does give a bad impression of the company.

In the end, it may be time to bring back the commercials that Walmart had praising their employees and their company. They certainly need damage control now like never before the next tragic event happens.

Why Staples is Sliding in its Stocks

In my last post, I discussed the giving of huge bonuses to the top executives of Staples.

Since then, the stock has dropped to below $11/share, making it to one of the lowest points in the company’s history.

Five years ago, when I left the company, the stock was valued at over $21/share and now it is worth about half that much.

So what is really happening here?

Bad weather has been the excuse used most of the time as the reason for the company’s failure to make the company’s sales goals. Even with the closure of companies like Circuit City, Staples still can’t improve and continued to fall when they should be gaining ground.

I feel that the real reason for their ongoing problems can be broken down to a couple of different things.

The first is that most all the items that Staples sells can be purchased elsewhere sometimes at a considerably cheaper price. This is has been especially beneficial to companies like Walmart as it has been a one-stop for just about everything.

But even Walmart has been hurt by such things as dollar stores and smaller retailers. So companies like Walmart can’t be blamed totally for the decline of Staples despite them causing a major hit against them, although Staples uses them as an easy target for their own decline.

The other problem is with the store’s management.

Anybody who has ever shopped or worked at Staples knows that the management seems to change almost as much as the staff that it employs. The reason is that if a manager sucks, they are shown the door.

Unfortunately, no manager is safe with Staples. Whether it is the store manager or sales manager or another manager, the company is notorious for eliminating managers on a regular basis.

During my nearly 10 years at Woolworth, we had only 2 store managers and 1 interim manager. During my nearly 13 years at Staples, we had at least 5 store managers and countless sales managers.

This regular changeover of management never made Staples an enjoyable place to work as each manager brought in their own rules and policies, basically undoing the policies of the manager before them.

So are the managers that bad?

Not at all but Staples would rather fire managers and put someone new in rather than staying the course and having some consistency within the company.

Overall, I feel that Staples should stop swapping out managers so frequently and learn to accept managers’ flaws. However, Staples is either unable or unwilling to suck it up and accept their managers.

So this whole scenario creates the instability that is unloved by those on Wall Street, therefore the stock continues its downward slide.

In some ways, I am thankful that I am no longer with the company as they continue their own slow death.

Sometimes liars do benefit others.